The Life Cycle of a Slime Mold - Animation

Final Life Drawing Submission

 

Maya Tutorial - Creating Joints and Edit Weights

Animation Title and DVD Template

 

 

 

 

I created the title in Illustrator as it is the same program I used to create my character concepts. As such I knew it could give the title the same quality as my character.

FV - Slime Mold Shot 15 Playblast

@Phil Alternate Leaf Eating Scene

I have slowed down the squash/stretch animation and added a twist deformation from left to right as he eats. Do you think this looks much more like he is eating or is something still missing?

FV - Amoeba Stage Pre-Vis

 

I have completely animated the Amoeba stage of my animation. It is easily the majority of my animation and now I just need to animate the aggregation stage to the fruiting body stage and then I can begin rendering.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for changes.

FV - Slime Mold Bounce Progress

This is my progress so far with the characters bounce. I'm finding it quite difficult to get it to work well. I went back and looked at the bouncing ball maya tutorial which helped me slightly but only to an extent.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve this, please let me know.

FV - Slime Mold Character Twist

These are the test renders I did for the newly added twist deformer I have added onto the character.

Maya Tutorial - Blend Shape Inbetweens

Maya Tutorial - Sculpt Deformer

Maya Tutorial - Blend Shape Mirroring

I found this tutorial quite interesting, I wouldn't have guessed a way to get around the problems blend shapes can cause when trying to mirror them. This will definitely be useful in the future.

FV - Spore Model

1st Render

2nd Render

3rd and Final Render

The modeling for the spore didn't take too long as it is quite simply a sphere with a control and a layered shader on it similar to the other models. After 3 renders where I tweaked the outline thickness for the spore I got it exactly where I wanted it. It is best that this model is simple as it will only be seen either at a distance in the 1st scene, or in the very last scene where there are quite a number of them floating away from the camera.

FV - Forest Pan Shot Testing

Current Scene Layout

 

I play blasted a test of this scene to make sure it is looking enough like a forest and that the positions of the trees are as good as they can be.

Do let me know if you think it could be improved.

Maya Tutorial - Wire Deformer

SM - Fruiting Body Playblast 2

 

 

I decided to playblast my slime mold fruiting body stage again to check that the outlines still worked effectively in animation. It seems to be working really well still.

FV - Slime Mold Fruiting Body Outline

 Working with a Layered Shader:

 

Working with a Toon Shader:

 

 

With the help of Simon I was able to get an effective toon shader working on the slime mold. As you can see it works much better than the layered shader. With the layered shader there was always an angle that would ruin the effect of the outline. Very pleased with the newly applied toon shader and with that, this part of the animation should be ready for pre-vis and animation.

FV - Leaf Colour Comparison

I wasn't sure whether I was happy with the colour choice for my leaf prop. I'm quite certain I want it to be an autumn leaf though. As such I've created 8 different surface shader variations of browns and oranges. Let me know what you think!



1 (Original)

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

FV - Leaf Texturing Progress

White Leaf with Outline

Autumn Leaf without Outline

Autumn Leaf with Outline

At the moment I am leaning towards using the autumn leaf without the outline. The brown for the autumn leaf may need some small adjustments if I decide to use it. I don't think I will use green for the leaf because I don't want it to be confused with the slime mold.

Let me know what you think.

FV - Slime Mold Aggregation to Fruiting Body Blend Shape

Overall I am really pleased with how well the blend shape animates the final processes in the slime mold's lifecycle.

FV - Tree Modelling and Texturing Progress

Tree Modeling Screenshot

 

Trees Render

 

From left to right;

1 Flattened tree model with a layered shader for the outline

2 Tree model with branches with a layered shader for the outline

3 Rectangular plane with a manual outline applied to faces along it edges

4 Unchanged tree model

 

The left most tree does not work particularly well with an outline and as such does not appear in the render image. At the moment I am testing what type of model works best to provide a clear outline. I think I will work with the outlined model (number 2) as it is close to what I want in my animation, it does need some work though before I am happy with it.

FV - Leaf Modeling Progress

I have modeled the leaf for the animation, I may tweak it more after I test it with an outline.

FV - Slime Mold Main Character Model

Character Model Setup

 

Renders

 

Main Character

Mid-Blink

Full Blink

 

Full Stretch

Full Squash

Full Forward Bend

Full Backward Bend

Look Down

Look Up

Look Right

Look Left

 

I'm quite happy with how the character is looking, and how well the deformers have worked to animate him. There may be small tweaks before he is completely ready for animation, but he is definitely very close to completion.